Carl Leubsdorf : Is Cruz winning over critics?

In a weekend of contrasts, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sought favor from two dramatically different audiences: his natural base at the Conservative Political Action Conference and his frequent mainstream media targets — and critics — at the white-tie Gridiron dinner.

He may have succeeded more at the latter, where only a minority probably shared his views.

The after-dinner Gridiron consensus was that, despite stretching its “singe, don’t burn” adage in some jabs at President Barack Obama, Cruz seemed less hard-edged, more human, than the Texan’s pre-dinner image or his in-show portrayal as a prehistoric “Flintstone cowboy.”

Meanwhile, Politico’s influential post-CPAC analysis rated him among the weekend’s losers, despite a good crowd reception and a second-place presidential straw-poll showing that far exceeded last year’s tie for seventh. James Hohmann faulted Cruz for not hanging around to schmooze and for stirring a controversy by suggesting GOP establishment heroes Bob Dole and John McCain lost presidential elections because they didn’t “stand for principle.”

Politico’s assessment seemed exaggerated because, besides those missteps, his underlying message — that Republicans should stand on principle and avoid compromising them — echoed that most famous of all CPAC speeches: Ronald Reagan’s 1975 call for “raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors.”

Cruz’s speeches reflected the disparity between the two audiences. While many of his Gridiron punch lines might have engendered either laughter or applause at CPAC, some CPAC lines would have only drawn disapproving groans from Gridiron’s assemblage of media moguls, government officials and journalists.

His sharpest CPAC shot at the press came in likening the media to the Democrats.

While millions of Americans opposed Obamacare, he said, “the Democrats said, the mainstream media said, though I repeat myself, they said this is hopeless, don’t you understand, just move on, just accept it.”

He then said, erroneously, that “the president of the United States is the first president we’ve had who thinks he can choose which law to enforce and which laws to ignore.” He didn’t take into account George W. Bush’s proclivity for declaring his intention of ignoring provisions of a bill he was signing.

In signing a 2008 defense measure, Bush said some provisions “purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations. ... The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president.”

At Gridiron, Cruz toned down the wording, though his criticism of Obama was similar and seemed to burn more than it singed. “We are still a nation of laws,” he said. “You just have to check with Barack Obama every day to see what they are.”

Besides himself and Obama, Cruz mocked several fellow Republicans, donning glasses while noting that a recently bespectacled Texas Gov. Rick Perry “seems to have found a way” to “fit in more with the smart set.” He reached out to a glass of water as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did in responding to Obama’s 2013 State of the Union. And in a line that Bloomberg’s Mark Silva reported that Cruz wrote himself, Cruz said he was representing Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, declaring “who am I to say no?” to the leader whose stances Cruz has often spurned.

Cruz’s reception easily surpassed Democratic speaker Charlie Crist, the former GOP governor of Florida, but not the one for Secretary of State John Kerry, who subbed for Obama.

In the end, Cruz’s presidential quest can’t succeed without some backing from both groups.

He needs strong support from the CPAC types, because more moderate Republicans will oppose him. But he can’t win the nomination or the presidency without enough mainstream media acceptance that he is a serious conservative with a positive agenda, rather than a shrill, negative outsider.

Carl Leubsdorf is the former Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His email address is carl.p.leubsdorf @gmail.com.

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About Carl P. Leubsdorf

Having decided in college that being a reporter would be a lot more interesting than being a tax lawyer, Carl went to Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and embarked on a journalistic career that so far has lasted from the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower to that of Barack Obama. Before becoming Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News in 1981, he apprenticed for 15 years at The Associated Press and five at The Baltimore Sun. After a crash course in Texanisms from the late Sam Attlesey, for many years the Political Writer of The News, and the late Jack DeVore, former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's press secretary, he joined The News and spent 28 years presiding over what became one of the best regional bureaus in Washington, while also covering national politics and the White House. He also started writing the column which continues today, following his 2008 retirement as the paper's bureau chief, and has appeared every Thursday since March 1981. In 1982, he married Susan Page, now Washington Bureau chief of USA Today, whom he met on a John Connally campaign bus in 1980. They have two sons, Ben, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Will, an aspiring political operative in Washington. Carl also has a son, Carl Jr., a computer whiz, and four stepchildren from his first marriage. Besides politics, he is a fervent sports fan, rooting with mixed success for baseball's New York Yankees and Washington Nationals; football's Washington Redskins; and waiting patiently for hockey's Washington Capitals to win their first Stanley Cup.

Hometown: New York City

Education: BA in Government from Cornell University. Phi Beta Kappa. MS in Journalism from Columbia University.